Right before Guts lost consciousness, he felt Casca's warm hand.
He could finally sleep in peace.
However, this hard-won rest did not bring his mind any peace. Instead, he plunged into a viscous, crimson world.
The sky was dark red, like a massive, gaping wound continuously dripping warm liquid.
The ground was twisted, piled high with countless agonizing, struggling human faces that let out silent wails.
He saw Griffith.
He stood in the center of that landscape of faces, cradling a bizarre, egg-shaped object in his hands.
The object was crimson, its surface covered in a tangled mess of human facial features, as if it had condensed all the suffering in the world.
'Egg of the King,' a name abruptly surfaced in Guts's mind.
The egg-shaped object let out a howl.
The entire blood-red world trembled violently in response.
The massive wound in the sky began to spin, forming a bottomless, blood-red vortex. Countless grotesque demons swarmed out from within, lunging toward the ground with an extreme thirst for flesh and blood.
Suddenly, four colossal shadows slowly descended from the bloody vortex.
They were the demon kings known as the God Hand, beings that transcended this dimension.
Their voices echoed directly within Guts's soul, telling Griffith that as long as he sacrificed the thing most important to him—the Band of the Hawk—he would gain the power of a god and become one of them.
Guts stared fixedly at Griffith.
He watched as the final light extinguished in the eyes of the man who was once as dazzling as a god.
Endless despair, resentment toward Guts for abandoning him, and the bitter unwillingness of being reduced to a cripple all ultimately coalesced into a single, pitch-black tear.
"I sacrifice."
Griffith's voice was calm and freezing cold.
He had chosen to fall.
A bloody light pierced the sky as he was enveloped by countless resentful spirits, his body beginning to reshape itself.
The very moment Griffith decided to make the sacrifice, a searing, agonizing pain branded itself onto the back of Guts's neck.
He reached back in agony, only to touch a patch of scalding, mangled flesh.
He saw the same bloody brand appear on Casca, Judeau, Pippin, and every single member of the Band of the Hawk.
They had become sacrifices.
A massive horde of demons charged at Guts's comrades with sinister grins.
"No!"
Filled with a sinister premonition, Guts tried to roar, but he couldn't make a sound.
He could only watch helplessly as the companions he laughed and fought alongside every day were brutally slaughtered in the most gruesome ways by the monstrous Apostles pouring out of the vortex.
To cover Casca, Judeau was sliced in half at the waist by a mantis-like Apostle, a final, bitter smile lingering on his face.
The immensely strong Pippin was torn apart and devoured by several monsters, his fists still swinging fiercely right up until his death.
Corkus, Rickert...
One familiar face after another was reduced to mangled chunks of flesh before his eyes, greedily devoured.
Despair, endless despair and fury filled Guts's heart.
As the members of the Band of the Hawk continued to die, Griffith gradually completed his evolution, ultimately transforming into the fifth God Hand.
A demon king with black wings—Femto.
The first thing the newborn demon king did was slowly fly toward Casca, who had broken down from extreme grief.
Right in front of Guts, he grabbed her.
Then, right in front of Guts, he violated her.
Under the overwhelming power of the newborn demon king Femto, Casca's struggles were completely futile.
Witnessing all of this, Guts let out a heart-rending roar.
"Aaaahhhhh!!!"
The last thread of his sanity completely snapped.
Like a rabid beast, he charged madly at Femto, only to be pinned firmly to the ground by countless swarming Apostles.
A massive, fang-filled Apostle bit off his left arm in a single chomp.
Agonizing pain washed over him.
Another Apostle's sharp claws slashed viciously at his face, gouging out his right eye, before grabbing his head and forcing him to watch Femto's atrocities.
Endless agony and absolute despair completely submerged him like a pitch-black tsunami.
"Ah—!"
Guts suddenly sat up from his bed in the camp, his chest heaving violently as he gasped for air.
His entire body was completely drenched in cold sweat.
He instinctively raised his left hand; it was perfectly intact.
He touched his right eye; the eyeball was still there.
Hearing his shout, Casca immediately rushed over, her face written with worry.
"Guts! You're awake? Did you have a nightmare?"
Guts looked at the real Casca in front of him, then at his intact arm, and his heart—which had nearly leaped out of his chest—slowly began to calm down.
He let out a long, long sigh of relief.
"So..."
"It was just a dream?"
"Thank god it was just a dream."
He muttered to himself.
But that bone-deep sense of despair still clung stubbornly to the depths of his soul, refusing to fade.
After that nightmare, Guts became even more taciturn.
He wiped down the massive Dragon Slayer sword over and over again. The cold gleam reflecting off the blade seemed to help him calm down a little.
He tried to use the exhaustion of battle to dispel those bloody memories from his mind.
But he failed.
The moment he closed his eyes, the images of his comrades dying tragically, along with the despairing cries of Casca and the Band of the Hawk, would loop endlessly in his ears.
On the other side, after rescuing Griffith, the entire Band of the Hawk's camp was shrouded in an unprecedentedly gloomy atmosphere.
They had lost their purpose.
Lost their faith.
Griffith's tragic state weighed on everyone's hearts like a heavy boulder.
The White Hawk who had once led them to create miracle after miracle was now nothing more than a cripple lying in a carriage, unable to even feed himself.
Griffith lay in the carriage, watching everything outside through the gap in the curtains.
He saw his subordinates—who once looked at him with absolute fanaticism—now deliberately avoiding his gaze.
He heard them whispering about their future prospects, discussing where the Band of the Hawk should go without him.
He knew.
He had already become an absolute burden.
That afternoon, while Casca was away fetching water, Griffith used every ounce of his strength to twist his crippled body and bite down hard on the carriage's reins.
Then, he violently jerked his head to the side.
Startled, the horse let out a long whinny and bolted madly, dragging the carriage along.
He wanted to use death to seek release.
"Griffith!"
Casca's alarmed cry instantly alerted Guts, who was not far away.
The out-of-control carriage was eventually stopped by a large boulder blocking the road. The fragile Griffith was violently thrown out by the massive impact.
His body traced a helpless parabola through the air, tumbling into a freezing stream.
In the icy water, his survival instincts made him thrash about wildly.
His hand fumbled through the mud at the bottom of the stream and accidentally brushed against a familiar, cold object.
It was the Egg of the King that had always hung around his neck.
In the distance, Guts, who had just caught up, witnessed this scene with his own eyes.
That crimson, egg-shaped object engraved with twisted human faces—the exact same one from his dream.
In an instant, all the bloody images from his dream flooded into his brain.
It wasn't a dream.
It was a premonition.
It was an inescapable fate that was about to unfold.
"No!!!"
"Don't! Griffith!"
Guts let out the most heart-rending roar of his life.
He used every ounce of strength in his body, charging recklessly toward Griffith by the river.
He had to snatch that egg away.
He had to stop that tragedy from happening.
He must stop it.
However, he was still a step too late.
Griffith seemed to sense something as well; his hollow eyes stared blankly at Guts running toward him.
But while Griffith was struggling in the water, his wrist had been cut by a sharp rock.
Copious amounts of blood flowed down his arm, soaking the Egg of the King.
The next second, the Egg of the King in Griffith's hand opened its eyes, unhinged its mouth, and let out a screech.
Then, the sky went dark.
A massive black sun eclipsed the blazing sun, instantly plunging the entire world into an eerie, oppressive gloom.